Leading and lagging indicators in fundraising management: A Canadian case study

Fundraisers, managers, and boards in the charitable sector are faced with an ongoing concern: how do they produce sustainable, predictable financial returns for their causes while minimizing the cost of fundraising? One way to address this is to improve the measurement of fundraising activities and this study asks how fundraising results should be communicated within organizations to support sustainability. This case study focuses on the fundraising program from one Canadian charity with a large, diversified fundraising program to examine how fundraisers can move beyond simple end-of-year financial ratios and implement one managerial technique, leading and lagging indicators, to improve long-term financial performance. A literature review, internal interviews, and internal document review are used to identify 81 potential leading and lagging indicators that fundraisers can use to develop a suite of indicators that fit their context, activities, and goals and to identify potential challenges with implementing indicators. The role of organizational context and characteristics in selecting an appropriate suite of indicators is also discussed.     

Geographical indication regulation and intra‐trade in the European Union

Protection of indications of geographical origin (GIs) can reduce information asymmetry between producers and consumers, and potentially enhance trade. However, GIs can also possibly divert trade. We rely on panel data about agri‐food trade among the 27 countries of the European Union to investigate these issues using variations of estimators proposed by Head and Mayer ( 2000 ) and Santos Silva and Tenreyro ( 2006 ). Our findings suggest that the protection of GIs creates trade when the importing and exporting countries have GI‐protected products. There is also empirical evidence regarding a trade‐diverting effect when the importing country does not have GIs and a border enlargement effect arising from European GI‐protection.     

Targets,indicators and milestones

Area-based initiatives are a major feature of the new public policy agenda of the Labour government in the UK. They are aimed at key policy goals of combating social exclusion and improving the operation of public services, through the encouragement of partnership and participation. However, the delivery of programmes has been heavily influenced by performance management and the use of targets, indicators and milestones to monitor activity. This is creating contradictory pressures on the managers and practitioners within programmes. These issues are discussed and their impact in one area-based activity (the Health Action Zones) is explored.     

The effects of beach characteristics and location with respect to hotel prices

This paper measures the effects of beach characteristics and hotel location with respect to the beach on sun-and-beach hotel prices by using a well-established hedonic perspective. The paper’s main results are that, after controlling for the relevant variables, location in front of a beach increases the price of a room in costal hotels of Catalonia by a figure between 13 and 17%, and that a Blue Flag increases the price by around 11.5%. The effects on hotels’ prices of other beach characteristics (such as beach length, width, sand type or beach services) are also estimated. With these estimates, the paper ranks beaches according to their characteristics and provides a setting to assess different policies regarding beaches from the point of view of hotels, such as regeneration, maintenance or achieving a Blue Flag award.     

MEASURING VARIATIONS IN LIFETIME WELFARE EX ANTE AND EX POST: SOME EXPLORATORY CALCULATIONS

Whereas longevity‐adjusted consumption measures have become increasingly used as indicators of lifetime standards of living, it remained unnoticed that those measures, by relying on period – rather than cohort – life tables, constitute indicators of expected – rather than actual – lifetime standards of living. In order to estimate the actual gap between ex ante and ex post measures of lifetime welfare, this paper computes, for 19th‐century European economies, longevity‐adjusted consumption measures based on period and cohort life tables. It is shown that the gap between ex ante and ex post measures is statistically significant, and that attempts to reduce it are likely to be unsuccessful, because standards of living tend to exhibit, over temporal horizons as long as a human life, structural breaks, which make the ex ante measurement of lifetime welfare highly speculative.     

浅谈财务分析指标在中小企业中的运用

在竞争日益激烈的市场经济中,经济活动追求实现经济利润最大化的目标。多年来,企业财务分析指标体系作为企业信息分析的重要资源,为企业决策者提供财务分析数据资料,做出科学的决策,把握正确的企业发展方向,实现经济效益最大化的目标,发挥了支撑和保障作用。因此,充实和完善适应现代经济发展需求的中小企业财务分析指标体系就显现出紧迫性和必要性。     

An evaluation framework for land readjustment practices

Land readjustment (LR) is an important technique used in a variety of countries to realize the development plans by converting rural land into urban land and providing city infrastructure. Although the main aim and the processes are similar around the world, each country has a different degree of success in the application of LR, which reveals the need for a comprehensive evaluation. However, the research to date has generally tended to focus on describing the main concepts such as the usage, principles, advantages, and disadvantages of the existing implementations rather than evaluating LR. A systematic approach, which provides an objective basis and removes subjectivity by identifying good practices and their indicators, is needed to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the LR process. In this article, we analyzed a wide range of ISI journal articles on LR to establish a framework and a methodology that will help evaluate and compare the national LR processes. The main contribution of this article is to build an awareness for the establishment of an internationally agreed methodology to evaluate the performance of a country's LR in a systematical way, which is currently not available in the literature.     

员工非财务指标披露满意度研究

国内外从未有人从员工角度进行过非财务指标披露的满意度排序研究和分组研究,从员工角度出发进行研究,是对员工所关注的反映其利益要求和实现方式信息的非财务指标披露的满意度进行的排序研究和分组研究。研究得出结论：员工对不同类的反映其利益要求和实现方式信息的非财务指标披露的满意度存在显著差异;个体和企业因素产生了员工同一类非财务指标披露的满意度差异。对满意度低的非财务指标的披露,企业应当改善其披露。对不同类别员工披露满意度存在显著差异的非财务指标,企业应当特别需要改善披露。     

Developing energy conservation and carbon reduction indicators for the hotel industry in Taiwan

This study develops and weights energy conservation and carbon reduction (ECCR) indicators for the hotel industry in Taiwan to create an instrument to help address climate change. Eighteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior hotel managers, environmental specialists, and government officials to identify the preliminary ECCR framework. An expert panel then was invited to review the structure of ECCR criteria and the compiled criteria in a structure for item modification. An analytic network process questionnaire survey was employed to determine the relative weights of the criteria. The data analysis reveals seven categories in the ECCR framework: communication and participation, top management commitment, energy, water, waste, building, and purchasing. A total of 32 indicators were identified and prioritized in terms of their relative importance to ECCR contributions. The results of this study suggest that the success of ECCR implementation depends primarily on management support and staff engagement. Hotel operators can improve their environmental management by initiating ECCR practices based on the proposed ECCR indicators.